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As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in March, opposing sides have been filing hundreds of pages of arguments.

One in particular – the brief filed by 26 states questioning the Medicaid portions of the Act – reads like it could have been written during the Great Depression. By relying upon legal doctrines disavowed since the late 1930s, it faces an immense hurdle in trying to undue decades of precedent and return to the federalism of a bygone age. Yet, this very reliance cracks open a door to an atavistic return to this defunct constitutional era.

Basically, the 26 States argue that Congress has coerced them into signing up for an expanded version of Medicaid under the threat of losing all federal Medicaid funding. The problem for them is a lack of choice. “While the ACA purports to leave States’ participation in Medicaid nominally voluntary,” they argue, “no State will be able to reject its new terms and withdraw from the program.”

The reason? The billions of dollars in federal Medicaid funds are simply too much to give up.

While the States acknowledge Congress’ broad powers in this arena, they argue that the Act went too far by serving as “an extreme and unprecedented abuse of Congress’ spending power....” “Indeed,” their brief emphasizes in one of its most dramatic moments, “if the ACA does not cross the line, no Act of Congress ever will.”

The “coercion doctrine” is a novel idea. As Lyle Denniston pointed out, the Court has rarely mentioned the theory.

And its application has been equally scarce. “There are no recent relevant instances in which the Supreme Court has invalidated a funding condition,” explained an appellate court in 2000. “On the other hand,” it went on, “there have been many cases in which the Supreme Court has upheld conditions placed on the receipt of federal funds” – similar to the type of obligations Congress imposed on the States under the health care law.

The striking thing is the brief’s reliance – at 123-pages, calling it a “brief” is a misnomer but that’s a story for another day – on U.S. v. Butler. Citing Butler, the argument section of the brief opens up with the following: “For the better part of a century, this Court has recognized that the spending power is not 'the instrument for total subversion of the governmental powers reserved to the individual states.’”

That in essence, is the States’ legal and – in a way – political argument. The constitution granted the federal government massive yet still limited powers preserved by the States. Under this structure, there are some things that Congress cannot force the States to do, even if it showers them with gold or in the case of the ACA, threatens to cut off the spigot to federal dollars. Congress breached these limitations, the States argue, by leaving them with no choice other than to accede to the Act’s requirements.

The brief mentions Butler on more than ten occasions, almost more than any other case. This frequency alone is telling. What is more telling is the dependence on Butler for many of the brief’s main assertions.

A few paragraphs after the opening, the States’ revisit Butler to hit home their main point. “The coercion doctrine,” their brief states, “is also an essential corollary of this Court’s holding that” Congress cannot “misuse its spending power to coerce States… to bear on subjects far outside Congress’ limited and enumerated powers.”

At first glance, Butler seems like a good case for the 26 states. In it, the Court prohibited Congress from taxing farmers to restrict their acreage in an effort to stabilize agricultural prices on the grounds that “agricultural production [is] a purely local activity.” The broad Congressional power to tax and spend, the Butler majority explained, did not allow it to encroach on areas of life traditionally “reserved to the States.” The opinion reads as a strong rebuke of federal meddling into state prerogatives.